CHAPTER TWELVE
They found a quiet spot at the far end of the lobby on the opposite side of where they had been working.
It was essentially hidden away from Hale's office, the credenza, and the elevator.
Pruitt had excused himself with a quiet nod and gone back through the staff door, leaving them with Samantha Osley and three paper cups of coffee.
Samantha had finally taken her coat off but kept it folded across her lap, as though she wasn't fully convinced she was staying. Rachel guessed her to be in her mid-fifties, with steady eyes and a composure that was at least partially an act.
“What brings you to Richmond?” Novak asked. “According to the case notes, you live in Greensboro, right?”
“That’s right, but I drove up this afternoon," Samantha said.
"The detective's office called me last night and said they were looking more carefully at the three deaths.
Detective Purcell sort of suggested that I should be prepared for the possibility that my mother's death wasn't from natural causes as we’d all originally thought.
" She set her coat on the chair beside her and simply stared at it for a moment.
"I couldn't just sit at home after that.
I needed to be here and talk to someone who could actually tell me what's going on. I know I could have done it over the phone but I…I don’t know.
I felt I owed it to her to be here in person. "
“I can understand that,” Rachel said softly.
She thought, for a moment, of Grandma Tate and what she would have done in a situation like this if she’d had the roles reversed.
She thought of her grandmother often, usually because Paige brought her up in some unexpected way.
To have memories of her surface now, in the midst of this, was more painful than she could properly handle.
"I think I was the last person to talk to her," Samantha said. "The night she died. We spoke on the phone. Maybe an hour before — " She stopped and reset. "Before whatever happened."
"How did she seem then?" Rachel asked.
"Good. She was in a good mood, actually.
She'd just gotten off the phone with my kids.
" Samantha looked at her hands. "She loved the small, dumb stuff, you know? She spoke with my son about a frog he’d found in the back yard for about fifteen minutes. To hear her talk with him about it, you’d think it was the best thing she'd heard all week.
" She exhaled slowly, and Rachel heard a slight tremor in it.
"That was the last conversation I had with her.
And then I got the call the next afternoon that she'd died in her sleep, and I thought — I mean, she was getting older, you know? So I thought it was just her time."
"What changed?" Novak asked.
"The detective called me, like I said. She said they were looking at the deaths more carefully.
All three of them." Samantha looked up. "She said she couldn't discuss specifics yet but that I should be prepared for the possibility that my mother's death wasn't natural…
that foul play could have been involved.
" She set her coat on the chair beside her, a small adjustment that seemed to help her.
"Foul play. It was like she was trying everything she could to not come out and say murder.
So I drove up. I needed to be here. I needed to talk to someone who could actually tell me what's going on. "
Rachel looked at her steadily. There was no easy, tactful way to handle the next part, and she'd learned years ago that softening it too much was its own form of unkindness. It left people in a waiting room between what they feared and what was true, and that space was worse than the truth itself.
"Your mother was murdered," she said. "The medical examiner's findings are conclusive. I'm sorry. I know that's hard to hear."
Samantha absorbed it without looking away. Her jaw tightened and her eyes went bright but she didn't look away. The steadiness of her face told Rachel that she’d pretty much already accepted this. Maybe on the drive from North Carolina.
"Okay," Samantha said, in a voice that was barely a word. “Thank you.”
Nobody spoke for a few seconds.
"She was eighty-three," Samantha said finally.
"And she was already — " She stopped again.
She pressed her fingers against her mouth briefly and then lowered her hand.
"She'd been diagnosed…earlier this year.
It was a cardiac condition that her doctor said was serious.
She was told she likely had a year, maybe a little more if she managed it well.
" She shook her head, sipped from the coffee she’d taken, and grimaced.
"She hadn't told anyone outside the immediate family yet.
She didn't want people treating her differently. "
Rachel kept her expression even. "Did she talk about what she wanted to do with the time she had?"
"She wanted to stay here. She'd made that very clear, even after I’d suggested a few very nice hospice centers near where I live.
" A short, complicated sound escaped Samantha — not quite a laugh, not quite a sob.
"I asked her to come to Greensboro and she said no.
I asked if she'd consider a care facility and she said absolutely not.
She told me she was going to die in her own apartment, in her own bed, on her own terms." She looked around the lobby slowly, at the high ceiling and the polished marble and the amber light.
"I was angry about it for a while. It felt like she was making it harder for all of us.
But eventually I understood it. It was what she wanted and it was her life and she'd earned the right to say how it went.
" Her voice dropped before she added, “I feel selfish now. Maybe I should have pressed harder, tried longer…” .
Rachel couldn’t help but think of Eleanor and of Grandma Tate. And with those two women lodged in her head, she said, "We're going to find out who did this."
Samantha nodded. She picked up her cup again and this time, she just looked at the coffee, setting it back down without drinking. "It just doesn't make any sense. Why her? She wasn't difficult. She didn't have enemies. She'd lived quietly in this building for fourteen years."
"We're still working to understand the connection between the three victims," Rachel said. "I can't share details of the investigation, but I want you to know that we're taking this seriously and we're not going anywhere."
"The detective said the same thing," Samantha said, without any particular accusation in it. It was just the weariness of someone who had been told reassuring things for several weeks but getting no real answers.
They stayed with her another ten minutes.
Rachel asked a few more questions about Margaret Osley's routines, her relationships in the building, whether she'd mentioned anyone she was worried about in the weeks before she died.
Samantha answered it all carefully, and nothing she offered raised any new alarms. Her mother had been content here—content enough to make sure it was the place where she would spend her final days.
She had been, by all accounts, a woman moving through her final chapter with intention and without complaint.
When they stood to leave, Samantha also stood and put her coat back on. "Thank you for talking to me," she said. "If you need anything else, I’m at a hotel just a few blocks away. And please let me know if there are any updates.”
"You came a long way," Rachel said. "We’ll absolutely make sure you’re kept in the loop if anything new comes up."
Samantha managed a small, tired nod and walked back toward the door. Rachel watched her go out into the night and then turned back to find Novak already looking at her.
She was thinking about Margaret Osley's remaining year or so of life.
She was thinking about Eleanor in her room on Redmond Avenue, crossing books off a list, the oak tree dropping leaves outside her window.
She was thinking about Neil Baxter standing in his kitchen saying his aunt wanted to die in her apartment, his voice controlled and the weight of defeat in it.
And then there was also Sylvia Marsh's doctor raising the subject of managed care, and Frank Deluca arranging home hospice so he could stay in his apartment through the end.
She was again struck by how that decision had been the last substantial one each victim had ever made.
It wasn't grief connecting them, nor was it some shared history Rachel had been able to find in the tenant database or in the interviews or in the hours she and Novak had spent sitting in borrowed chairs in this lobby. It was that decision they’d all made.
That specific, private declaration that got made with a daughter on the phone, or with a doctor in an office, or when a nephew started pushing brochures for assisted care living.
She didn't know yet what to do with it. She could feel the shape of something without being able to see it clearly, the way you register a change in a room before figuring out which piece of furniture had been moved. Something was there…almost there, anyway.
"I need a few minutes," she said to Novak. “You cool if I step out for a bit?”
He looked at her, concerned. "You okay?"
"Yeah. I just need to think…to get out of this building." She picked up her jacket from the chair. "Give me ten minutes."
He nodded, asking nothing further. He sat back down to his coffee and laptop and got back to work.
Rachel crossed the lobby and pushed through the front door.
The cold came at her immediately, clean and direct.
The evening was now fully dark on Monument Avenue.
The green canopy hung still overhead. The lamp post at the edge of the walkway cast a narrow circle of light onto the stone path, and traffic was light in both directions.
She thought of her tumor and how she had, for a while, been torn between the choice of letting her life end or fighting like hell for another chance.
It wasn’t the same decision the three victims had made about their preferences in terms of where they’d die, but it was close.
She felt there was something there she was missing but it was just a bit out of her reach.
It was maddening, really. She stepped out under a dark sky that had gone the color of slate and took a deep breath.
And as she started to walk, she did her best to convince herself that this was more than a simple, temporary retreat from a case that was starting to feel more personal than she’d anticipated.